Monthly Archives: March 2012

With a camera in my hands, I am perhaps inclined to spend too much time looking around and not enough time looking up. When taking these photos I made a conscious decision to get as near as possible to the trees I was photographing and, in so doing, to change my customary perspective. The results were pleasing. For example, the first picture has quite an oriental feel with its hint of eastern hieroglyphs, and the last one seems to be peopled with characters from L S Lowry or Breughel, I’m not sure which!

When introducing Abstract 122 ‘Crocus’ I wrote, ‘My interest is primarily in the colours, the lines, the textures and, above all, the feelings evoked in the viewer.’ The source of the present ‘abstract’ is a cyclamen and the colour range, as the title indicates, is restricted to shades of pink. Again I am mainly interested in the instinctive response of the viewer. This is not a botanical record.

It’s pussy willow time! As a small child I enjoyed the arrival of the pussy willows, catkins and lambs’ tails. They were somehow different from the leaf buds appearing at this time – they were unusual, they had character, they were ‘friendly’. That early attraction has remained – I still look forward to pussy willow time!

The bleached appearance of winter grasses provides limited colour interest but, at the same time, seems to emphasise shapes and patterns – features that make them a source attractive to black and white photographers.

I came across this small cushion of flowering moss whilst tidying up the flower border. It was perched in isolation on the stump of an old laburnum blown down during a gale a few years ago. In size, the entire plant would comfortably sit in the palm of a hand, but its delicate details were perfectly formed – a miniature, magical grove.

I came across this tree root beneath the hedgerow beside the bridle way. At this time of the year, when the grass is comparatively inactive, all sorts of things become visible that are normally not noticed. At a first cursory glance I was not sure what I had found – you can perhaps understand why! It is, in fact, the rotting root of a hawthorn. The photo has not been ‘doctored’, except that some of the growth around the trunk has been removed to show its shape more clearly.